The Treaty of Fontainebleau was an agreement concluded in Fontainebleau, France, on 11 April 1814 between Napoleon and representatives of Austria, Russia and Prussia. The treaty was signed in Paris on 11 April by the plenipotentiaries of both sides and ratified by Napoleon on 13 April. [1] With this treaty, the allies ended Napoleon's rule as emperor of the French and sent him into exile on Elba.
In the War of the Sixth Coalition (1812–1814), a coalition of Austria, Prussia, Russia, Sweden, the United Kingdom and a number of German states drove Napoleon out of Germany in 1813. In 1814, while the United Kingdom, Spain and Portugal invaded France across the Pyrenees; Russia, Austria and their allies invaded France across the Rhine and, after the Battle of Paris, entered into negotiations with members of the French government for the abdication of Napoleon.
On 31 March, the Coalition issued a declaration to the French nation:
The allied powers having occupied Paris, they are ready to receive the declaration of the French nation. They declare, that if it was indispensable that the conditions of peace should contain stronger guarantees when it was necessary to enchain the ambition of Napoleon, they would become more favourable when, by a return to a wiser government, France itself offers the assurance of repose. The allied sovereigns declare, in consequence, that they will no longer treat with Napoleon nor with any of his family; that they respect the integrity of old France, as it existed under its legitimate kings—they may even go further, for they always profess the principle, that for the happiness of Europe it is necessary that France should be great and powerful; that they recognise and will guarantee such a constitution as the French nation may give itself. They invite, consequently, the senate to appoint a provisional government, which may provide for the necessities of administration, and establish such a constitution as may be fitting for the French people. The intentions which I have just expressed are common to me with all the allied powers. Alexander, Paris, 31st March 1814 : Three P.M. [2]
On 1 April, Russian Emperor Alexander I addressed the French Sénat conservateur in person and laid out similar terms as were in the previous day's declaration. As a gesture of good will, he announced that 150,000 French prisoners of war who had been held by the Russians since the French invasion of Russia, two years earlier, would be released immediately. The next day, the Senate agreed to the Coalition's terms and passed a resolution deposing Napoleon. [3] They also passed a decree dated 5 April, justifying their actions, and ending:
...the senate declares and decrees as follows :—1. Napoleon Buonaparte is cast down from the throne, and the right of succession in his family is abolished. 2. The French people and army are absolved from their oath of fidelity to him. 3. The present decree shall be transmitted to the departments and armies, and proclaimed immediately in all the quarters of the capital. [4]
On 3 April 1814, word reached Napoleon, who was at the Palace of Fontainebleau, that the French Senate had dethroned him. As the Coalition forces had made public their position that their quarrel was with Napoleon and not the French people, he called their bluff and abdicated in favour of his son, with the Empress Marie-Louise as regent.
Three plenipotentiaries took this conditional abdication to the Coalition sovereigns:
The allied powers having proclaimed that the Emperor Napoleon is the sole obstacle to the re-establishment of peace in Europe, – the Emperor Napoleon, faithful to his oath, declares that he is ready to descend from the throne, to quit France, and even life itself, for the good of the country, which is inseparable from the rights of his son, of the regency of the Empress, and of the maintenance of the laws of the empire.
— Napoleon: Fontainebleau, 4 April 1814 [5]
While the plenipotentiaries were travelling to deliver their message, Napoleon heard that Auguste Marmont had placed his corps in a hopeless position and that their surrender was inevitable. The Coalition sovereigns were in no mood to compromise and rejected Napoleon's offer. Emperor Alexander stated:
A regency with the Empress and her son, sounds well, I admit; but Napoleon remains – there is the difficulty. In vain will he promise to remain quiet in the retreat which will be assigned to him. You know even better than I his devouring activity, his ambition. Some fine morning he will put himself at the head of the regency, or in its place: then the war will recommence, and all Europe will be on fire. The very dread of such an occurrence will oblige the Allies to keep their armies on foot, and thus frustrate all their intentions in making peace. [6]
With the rejection of his conditional abdication and no military option left to him, Napoleon bowed to the inevitable:
The allied powers having declared that the Emperor Napoleon is the sole obstacle to the re-establishment of a general peace in Europe, the Emperor Napoleon, faithful to his oath, declares that he renounces, for himself and his heirs the throne of France and Italy; and that there is no personal sacrifice, not even that of life itself, which he is not willing to make for the interests of France.
— Napoleon: Fontainebleau, 6 April 1814 [7]
Over the next few days, with Napoleon's reign over France now at an end, the formal treaty was negotiated and signed by the plenipotentiaries in Paris on 11 April and ratified by Napoleon on 13 April.
The agreement contained a total of 21 articles. By the most significant terms of the accord, Napoleon was stripped of his powers as ruler of the French Empire, but both Napoleon and Marie-Louise were permitted to preserve their respective titles as emperor and empress. [8] Moreover, all of Napoleon's successors and family members were prohibited from attaining power in France. [9]
The treaty also established the island of Elba as a separate principality to be ruled by Napoleon. [10] Elba's sovereignty and flag were guaranteed recognition by foreign powers in the accord, but only France was allowed to assimilate the island. [11]
In another tenet of the agreement, the Duchy of Parma, the Duchy of Piacentia and the Duchy of Guastalla were ceded to Empress Marie-Louise. Moreover, a direct male descendant of Empress Marie-Louise would be known as the Prince of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla. [12] In other parts of the treaty, Empress Josephine's annual income was reduced to 1,000,000 francs [13] and Napoleon had to surrender all of his estates in France to the French crown, [14] and submit all crown jewels to France. [15] He was permitted to take with him 400 men to serve as his personal guard. [16]
The signatories were Caulaincourt, Duke of Vicenza, Marshal MacDonald, Duke of Tarentum, Marshal Ney, Duke of Elchingen, Prince Metternich, Count Nesselrode, and Baron Hardenberg. [17]
The British position was that the French nation was in a state of rebellion and that Napoleon was a usurper. Castlereagh explained that he would not sign on behalf of the king of the United Kingdom because to do so would recognise the legitimacy of Napoleon as emperor of the French and that to exile him to an island over which he had sovereignty, only a short distance from France and Italy, both of which had strong Jacobin factions, could easily lead to further conflict. [18]
In 2005, two Americans, former history professor John William Rooney (then aged 74) and Marshall Lawrence Pierce (then aged 44), were charged by a French court for stealing a copy of the Treaty of Fontainebleau from the French National Archives between 1974 and 1988. The theft came to light in 1996, when a curator of the French National Archives discovered that Pierce had put the document up for sale at Sotheby's. Rooney and Pierce pleaded guilty in the United States and were fined ($1,000 for Rooney and $10,000 for Pierce). However, they were not extradited to France to stand trial there. The copy of the treaty and a number of other documents (including letters from King Louis XVIII of France) that were checked out from the French National Archives by Rooney and Pierce were returned to France by the United States in 2002. [19] [20]
Fontainebleau is a commune in the metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located 55.5 kilometres (34.5 mi) south-southeast of the centre of Paris. Fontainebleau is a sub-prefecture of the Seine-et-Marne department, and it is the seat of the arrondissement of Fontainebleau. The commune has the largest land area in the Île-de-France region; it is the only one to cover a larger area than Paris itself. The commune is closest to Seine-et-Marne Prefecture, Melun.
The Congress of Vienna of 1814–1815 was a series of international diplomatic meetings to discuss and agree upon a possible new layout of the European political and constitutional order after the downfall of the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Participants were representatives of all European powers and other stakeholders. The Congress was chaired by Austrian statesman Klemens von Metternich, and was held in Vienna from September 1814 to June 1815.
Napoleon II was the disputed Emperor of the French for a few weeks in 1815. He was the son of Emperor Napoleon I and Empress Marie Louise, daughter of Emperor Francis I of Austria. Napoleon II had been Prince Imperial of France and King of Rome since birth. After the fall of his father, he lived the rest of his life in Vienna and was known in the Austrian court as Franz, Duke of Reichstadt for his adult life. He was posthumously given the nickname L'Aiglon after the popular Edmond Rostand play, L'Aiglon.
Marie Louise was an Austrian archduchess who reigned as Duchess of Parma from 11 April 1814 until her death. She was Napoleon's second wife and as such Empress of the French and Queen of Italy from their marriage on 1 April 1810 until his abdication on 6 April 1814.
The Battle of Montereau was fought during the War of the Sixth Coalition between an Imperial French army led by Emperor Napoleon and a corps of Austrians and Württembergers commanded by Crown Prince Frederick William of Württemberg. While Napoleon's army mauled an Allied army under Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, the main Allied army commanded by Karl Philipp, Prince of Schwarzenberg, advanced to a position dangerously close to Paris. Gathering up his outnumbered forces, Napoleon rushed his soldiers south to deal with Schwarzenberg. Hearing of the approach of the French emperor, the Allied commander ordered a withdrawal, but on 17 February saw his rear guards overrun or brushed aside.
The Treaty of Paris, signed on 30 May 1814, ended the war between France and the Sixth Coalition, part of the Napoleonic Wars, following an armistice signed on 23 April between Charles, Count of Artois, and the allies. The treaty set the borders for France under the House of Bourbon and restored territories to other nations. It is sometimes called the First Peace of Paris, as another one followed in 1815.
The Hundred Days, also known as the War of the Seventh Coalition, marked the period between Napoleon's return from eleven months of exile on the island of Elba to Paris on 20 March 1815 and the second restoration of King Louis XVIII on 8 July 1815. This period saw the War of the Seventh Coalition, and includes the Waterloo Campaign and the Neapolitan War as well as several other minor campaigns. The phrase les Cent Jours was first used by the prefect of Paris, Gaspard, comte de Chabrol, in his speech welcoming the king back to Paris on 8 July.
In the War of the Sixth Coalition, sometimes known in Germany as the Wars of Liberation, a coalition of Austria, Prussia, Russia, Spain, Great Britain, Portugal, Sweden, Sardinia, and a number of German States defeated France and drove Napoleon into exile on Elba. After the disastrous French invasion of Russia of 1812 in which they had been forced to support France, Prussia and Austria joined Russia, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Portugal, and the rebels in Spain who were already at war with France.
The Six Days Campaign was a final series of victories by the forces of Napoleon I of France as the Sixth Coalition closed in on Paris.
The Battle of Paris was fought on 30–31 March 1814 between the Sixth Coalition, consisting of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, and the French Empire. After a day of fighting in the suburbs of Paris, the French surrendered on 31 March, ending the War of the Sixth Coalition and forcing Emperor Napoleon to abdicate and go into exile.
Karl Philipp, Fürst zu Schwarzenberg was an Austrian Generalissimo and former Field Marshal. He first entered military service in 1788 and fought against the Turks. During the French Revolutionary War, he fought on the allied side against France and in that period rose through the ranks of the Imperial Army. During the Napoleonic Wars, he fought in the Battle of Wagram (1809), which the Austrians lost decisively against Napoleon. He had to fight for Napoleon in the Battle of Gorodechno (1812) against the Russians and won. During the War of the Sixth Coalition, he was in command of the allied army that decisively defeated Napoleon in the Battle of Leipzig (1813). He participated in the Battle of Paris (1814), which forced Napoleon to abdicate.
Adam Albert, Count von Neipperg was an Austrian general and statesman. He was the son of a diplomat famous for inventing a letter-copying machine, and the grandson of Count Wilhelm Reinhard von Neipperg. His second wife, Empress Marie-Louise, was the widow of Napoleon and a daughter of Francis II, the last Holy Roman Emperor and founding Emperor of the Austrian Empire.
The 1814 campaign in north-east France was Napoleon's final campaign of the War of the Sixth Coalition. Following their victory at Leipzig in 1813, the Austrian, Prussian, Russian, and other German armies of the Sixth Coalition invaded France. Despite the disproportionate forces in favour of the Coalition, Napoleon managed to inflict several defeats, the Six Days' Campaign being the most well-known. However, the campaign ended in total defeat for Napoleon as the Coalition kept advancing towards Paris as Napoleon was out of position to defend the capital, which capitulated in late March 1814. When Napoleon proposed the army march on Paris, his Marshals decided to unanimously overrule Napoleon in order to save the city from further destruction. As a result, the victorious Coalition negotiated the Treaty of Paris, under which Napoleon was exiled to the island of Elba and the borders of France were returned to where they had been in 1792.
The First French Empire, officially the French Republic, then the French Empire after 1809 and also known as Napoleonic France, was the empire ruled by Napoleon Bonaparte, who established French hegemony over much of continental Europe at the beginning of the 19th century. It lasted from 18 May 1804 to 3 May 1814 and again briefly from 20 March 1815 to 7 July 1815, when Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena.
Alexander I, nicknamed "the Blessed", was Emperor of Russia from 1801, the first king of Congress Poland from 1815, and the grand duke of Finland from 1809 to his death in 1825. He was the eldest son of Emperor Paul I and Sophie Dorothea of Württemberg.
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Diplomatic timeline for 1815
The Principality of Elba was a non-hereditary monarchy established on the Mediterranean island of Elba following the Treaty of Fontainebleau on 11 April 1814. It lasted less than a year, and its only head was Napoleon Bonaparte, who would return to rule in France before his ultimate defeat and the dissolution of the principality.
Prince Imperial of France was a title originally created under the Constitution of the Year XII, in 1804, to designate the eldest son of the Emperor of the French under the First French Empire. The title was, furthermore, revived under the Sénatus-Consulte of 25 December 1852, to serve the same role under the Second French Empire. Unlike the similar titles of Prince Imperial of Brazil and Prince Imperial of Mexico, however, the title could not be kept in use by the House of Bonaparte after the death of Napoléon, Prince Imperial, as the wording both of the Constitution of the Year XII and the Sénatus-Consulte of 25 December 1852 explicitly specifies that the title shall be borne by the eldest son of the Emperor.
The Congress of Châtillon was a peace conference held at Châtillon-sur-Seine, north-eastern France, from 5 February to 5 March 1814, in the latter stages of the War of the Sixth Coalition. Peace had previously been offered by the Coalition allies to Napoleon I's France in the November 1813 Frankfurt proposals. These proposals required that France revert to her "natural borders" of the Rhine, Pyrenees and the Alps. Napoleon was reluctant to lose his territories in Germany and Italy and refused the proposals. By December the French had been pushed back in Germany and Napoleon indicated that he would accept peace on the Frankfurt terms. The Coalition however now sought to reduce France to her 1791 borders, which would not include Belgium.
